Book Release: The Superior Wife Syndrome

An interview with author Carin Rubenstein

Lately, it seems, someone announces daily that marriage is over: socially tedious, sexually dead, and detrimental to wives' emotional health (because they still do most of the housework, the home management, and the parenting). The latest arrival on the marriage-bashing bandwagon is Carin Rubenstein and her new book, The Superior Wife Syndrome (Touchstone). Having surveyed some 1,500 wives and husbands and scrutinized current research on marriage and love, she concludes that in some two-thirds of marriages today, wives are "more efficient, more decisive, more intuitive, and more competent" than their husbands—and the consequences are dire. Really?

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If your husband is really as you present him—a Bart Simpson to your Marge, who whines about getting off the couch to let out the dog while you're cooking dinner, shelving groceries, doing laundry, or all three—and this even though you both make a living!—why the hell do you stay?

You know, I've asked myself that many times. He's incredibly loyal. And I can be very lazy. And [being a superior wife] gives me a sense of control and power that I don't have in other places.

In other words, you, and other "superior wives," are partly responsible for this "syndrome," too.

It's 50/50. It's his fault, but she puts up with it.

You have a list of things that make someone the "superior" spouse—among them, the one who can multitask; who is likely to sacrifice his or her own needs for others; and who shows the most support and affection to family and friends. But who's to say that these stereotypically female qualities are "superior" or "better"? You could make a different list and include stuff such as who's the calmer one, or who yells less if the house is messy, and men would win.

I agree, but I think the phenomenon is real. There's something scaring women off of marriage, or remarriage, and I'm hoping I've put my finger on it.

You talk about the fact that as women make more money, they become more dissatisfied in the marriage. Of the women who earn all or almost all of the family income—"Alpha wives"—one in three has divorced at least once.

Yes. Although I was surprised, because when I analyzed my data by [types] of marriage [he earns more, she earns more, etc], I expected real differences, but superior wives existed at all four levels. The only thing that mattered was that the more money the man earned, the more likely he was to be in a superior-wife marriage.

Because, as you say in the book, "It's as if men who earn a hefty wage are convinced that this fact exempts them from any and all other family responsibility, no matter how much their wives also earn"—therefore, "compelling their wives to become the expert at every domestic chore." And yet wives who earn more than $50,000 or $75,000 a year were no less likely to be superior than wives who earned much less.

The women most likely either to be fine with being superior wives or to not be superior wives at all were the homemakers—happy housewives. Because they were the ones who had very clear gender roles: I raise the children, he's the head of the household. There are subcultures in this country where it's still like that. The Mormons, for example.

So those women reported being happier?

Yes! But it's easier to live if you don't have choices; life is so much simpler. The downside is that they have no autonomy, they have no independent sense of themselves as separate human beings.

I think your husband is projecting something about his own fears about being emasculated by having to do household chores. Because most of the research is pretty clear that the more household chores men do—the more they give at home—the better their sex life.

Except in traditional marriage, as you discover. Interestingly, you found that the two marriages that often avoid the "superiority" syndrome are the extremes: supertraditional and extremely egalitarian. The key is that both partners agree about how the marriage should be arranged, and that it feels fair. Wives in traditional marriages believe the husband is the unequivocal head of the household, and "reject superiority." And wives in truly egalitarian marriages have husbands deeply committed to equality. Plus, these wives accept imperfection; they don't need everything done their way all the time.

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Right. And it's not necessarily dividing [things] right down the middle. The wife has to perceive it as fair. I think husbands would be amazed at how much better their sex lives would be if they would just say to their wives, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Are you implying that married sex for women is about bartering, as opposed to some hot primal urge?

Once you get into domestic daily living with children, I think that's true. As I say in the book, if you put a marble in a bag every time a couple has sex in the first year of their marriage and then take out a marble for each time after that, the bag will never be empty. I did find exceptions to that rule. [But] I think that monogamy for most people is pretty much a killer of sexual passion.

Your stats about sex range from sobering to amusing. I like your finding that 40 percent of women in China say they have sex only to please their husbands, and the same number fake orgasms.

Yes--it's not just us. (laughs)

Speak for yourself! But I believe you, because I see and hear it everywhere: Husbands and wives are not sexually in sync. In your research, only 15 percent of superior wives and 32 percent of other wives called themselves "very happy" with their sex lives. You've found that 56 percent of all husbands often have to "beg" their wives for sex (and 21 percent of wives said they sometimes feel they are begging for sex), and that 3 in 10 American wives say they lack a desire for sex—a number, by the way, that's repeated in similar studies worldwide. And that's just the ones who admit it! You give many reasons for this—biology, hormones, anger.

There's tons of research. For men, sex is almost a physiological reaction. For women it's a psychological phenomenon.

You find that couples today argue more than they used to and are less satisfied with marriage. One major national study you cite found that only about one in three marriages is stable and harmonious. What do you see as the future of marriage in this country?

I'm not entirely optimistic about it. We expect more than ever before from marriage.

True. Our husbands are supposed to be our co-earners and co-parents, to be sexy and faithful, to be our friends and lovers alike. Maybe it's too much.

Maybe if we started expecting a lot less of it, we'd be much better off.

Which takes us back to the fifties and traditional marriage, no? He makes the money, and you raise the kids, keep the house, and put out once or twice a week?

For women who can accept that—they have my blessing, you know? But I wouldn't want that.